Retro Vacation Photos {Rome & Italy}

I'm skipping ahead in my retro vacation photo series past any trips I took in high school, straight to my very first voyage to a foreign land: ITALY! This bildungsroman will be told in two parts, and contains more anecdotes than most of my future photo series will. You may find that it is one part comedy, one part tragedy. My life is sort of like an opera in that way.

Let me just say that when I was in college, I always thought I looked half way decent...but looking back at myself now....UGH! What was I thinking?

in front of Mt. Vesuvius in the ancient city of Pompeii

In all of the photos from my college trips, I was attempting to dress comfortably and casual, but I was a fashion nightmare. I know that. It doesn't matter now. Well it does matter because I will only be showing a select few photos of myself in 'MSSU' t-shirts, jeans and tennis shoes with a sweatshirt tied around my waist and my ultra dorky 'travel document pouch' HIDDEN beneath my shirt. Our professor insisted that we wear a necklace containing our passports, money, important papers in a pouch under our shirt so it was very hard to wear flattering clothing while trying to conceal a small carry-on on top of my boobs, under my shirt. And a giant lens film camera on top of my boobs on top of my shirt. Layer, layer, layering is the key when traveling comfortably. Right.

Another interesting thing about photos of me from my trips...is that there aren't very many....since I signed up for these excursions on a whim, I wasn't traveling with my BFF....sure I tried to make friends on the trips, but travel cliques are hard to break into, so I just tried to be friends with everyone which meant that I didn't get my picture taken too frequently unless I asked someone to juggle own their camera and get a shot of me in front of a famous volcano or monument (just as everyone else was posing in front of the same scene)...or unless someone randomly snapped a picture of me and I accidentally looked at their camera and a picture like this was born; forever not in my favor.

Look at me, I am in a castle!! I look thrilled.

When I went to Italy, in 2003, I bought the largest suitcase I could find. And the smallest travel journal so that it would be completely manageable for the trip. The travel journal was perfect, but the suitcase experience was horrible. When we landed in Italy, my suitcase was literally wrapped like a packing tape sculpture. It was completely wrapped in saran wrap and clear tape when it came off the luggage carousel. I had to wait in a special line and go to a special office so that someone could help me open it. Inside was a tiny note saying that my suitcase had been searched. No shit.

Apparently the zipper wasn't functioning correctly and they couldn't close it. After that day I had no trouble with the zipper, but it was scary and horrifying to arrive in my first foreign country with everything that I could fit in an enormous suitcase rifled through. I can't say that I blame them for looking through my suitcase actually. One of my professors had recommended that I do some art history research throughout the trip so that I could stay informed about the places I would be visiting. It made perfect sense that I listen to his advice, since I had never been out of the United States before. So, when he lent me the text book on Italian Art, I made sure it had a spot in my suitcase. A TEXT BOOK people. I clearly had no clue that I would be lugging this enormously monstrous suitcase around Italy. And that many of our hotels and monasteries wouldn't have elevators. I also carted around a language dictionary, a travel sketchbook, and a travel journal. So I had well over 12 lbs of books in my checked baggage.

One clever idea that I had was to buy enough underwear for the entire trip and then just throw it away each day so that I wouldn't be hauling around dirty panties for 2 weeks. Because a few pairs of ladies underwear take up so much more space than half a library. Very sensible.

A peek inside my journal. I will admit, I collected some pretty amazing 'art teacher' artifacts in Italy!

Here is my travel journal.

I was fairly diligent in my journaling from this trip. The phone number at the top was for our tour guide, in case of an emergency. I couldn't say 'right' or 'left' in Italian if I got lost so I don't know how I would convey to a stranger that I needed to use their cell phone (or who am I kidding, home phone....or maybe I could've used a pay phone....it was the early 2000s).

the Italian mafia is enjoying a scoop of gelato

we were literally steps away from so many famous Roman landmarks

scooter envy

Pantheon

I don't think I took this one because of the digital date stamp on it, but it is in with my photos and its a cool picture!

the Pantheon

Leaning tower of Pisa

the island of Capri

I have so many beautiful photos from Italy, it was difficult to choose the right ones for this post. But these are the pretty 'touristy' photos that just gather dust in my albums so thanks for looking!!

Retro Vacation Photos {Series}

My family took two BIG road trips when I was little. Both were to Oregon to visit my grandparents.

The trip from Missouri to the Oregon Coast is well over 2,000 miles one way so a significant amount of time is spent in the car.

In the photo below, I am about 6 or 7....my first time to see the ocean.

My mom and aunt took turns driving by mini-van, back in the day when it was perfectly appropriate to take out the middle seat to make room for a large pallet in the floor. Seat belts? Ha! I spent most of the return trip draped over the luggage in the back window, watching the mountains disappear in the distance while we sang loudly to cassette tapes of Garth Brooks 'The Thunder Rolls'. My brother and cousin played and slept on the pallet and I tried to entertain my youngest cousin who spent the entire trip strapped into a car seat.This was well before portable DVD players and none of us even owned game boys yet.

The 2nd time we drove to Oregon, I was 14. My dad came this time, and instead of renting a mini van, we took the trip caravan style in two small compact cars. I took turns between switching between cars with my parents and my aunt. Ah, the 90s.....I remember at one remote gas station in the mountains we HAD to fill up and the fuel was $1.03, the most expensive I had ever seen it in my entire life!!

Here is a little family portrait from the trip.

Here is my aunt and my cousins. And some weird photo-bombing kid in the background. 

For this special family vacation, I kept a trip journal. Here is a peek inside.

 

After searching through some of my treasures from my childhood, I found a paper from Jr. High that I had written about our summer vacation. It was a good thing I kept this journal, I'm sure it helped inspire most of the details in the paper. Funny, now that I look back at it, at age 14, I kept track of every boy who spoke to me on the trip....I was a little boy crazy.

Here are a few more journals from some of my other travels. I did NOT round them ALL up for this photo.... I have quite the collection of journals from my various trips.

I wasn't always extremely diligent about journaling. In fact, I particularly love the trip journal above because it asked me specific questions about each day....on other trips, I was usually so exhausted after a day of sight-seeing that I just didn't have the energy to catalog every feeling and emotion into a journal entry.

 Many of the travel trackers are stuffed with receipts, labels, and other artifacts from the trip. I love to make lists before the trip and write down quotes, restaurants and memorable things from the trip as we go along. I have travel journals from Italy, Australia/New Zealand, Sweden, Jamaica, and much closer places like St. Louis, Chicago, Washington D.C. and New Orleans.

The thing that people always tell you when you go on a big trip: 'take lots of pictures!!'

'We want to see them when you get back'....but people don't really want to see your pictures.

At least no one ever wants to see my old travel photos.

After some of my bigger trips on college, I very diligently organized all of my photos into an album with captions, but very few people really sincerely wanted to see them.

So here I am, with this giant stash of beautiful and lovely photos. Back before the days of facebook....before the days of digital photography, I took a lot of great shots with good 'ol film!

I've spent several hours organizing and scanning some of my favorite photos from my travels. Over the next several weeks, I will share them with you here. Can photos from the 90s and early 2000s really be retro? Well, I'm going to say yes....because they are from film cameras and they are part of my history.

Enjoy!

St. Charles Part 2

Here are a few more precious gems from St. Charles.

St. Charles Part 1

I have been to St. Charles in both summer and spring, but wow....FALL is gorgeous. Check out these lovely photos of the historic downtown. It was beautiful.

So what does one do at an art teacher's convention?

Well, this particular convention is held every fall at a beautiful camp ground in Missouri. Two years ago, I was wearing shorts, sweating the entire time...this year, I was totally bundled up and freezing. But I thought it would be fun to give you a taste of what we do there.

My trip.
I drove from Joplin to Knob Noster taking a slight detour to the Osceola Cheese place.....the hap.hap.Happiest place on earth (well, on highway 13 anyway!)....They have a giant cheese cooler with free samples. You can try anything from plain old cheddar to blue berry gouda. YUM!


It was freezing so I stopped to buy some red boots to keep my feet dry. I got the last pair of red ones. Totally worth every penny.



I found a really cool laundromat and decided to take a few pictures before heading to the campground. I was trying to kill some time, it was cold and I got into town really early.


First workshop. Edible color wheel. Yum! Frosting and vanilla wafers.


From there I went to several other cool workshops...didn't take any super cool photos to share...most of it was elementary artwork in bad lighting.

@ Drag'n'Brag teachers bring some of their recent lessons that they are proud to share with others. Saw a few cool things there.


Bundled up with my friend Danielle. We met at this conference 2 years ago. She met her future husband at the conference last year. They are getting married in 2 weeks. We only see each other a couple of times a year, but we have so much in common!

On Friday night there is a big tent set up and everyone paints giant canvas art advocacy banners. Here is a really cool one based on a Boulevard Beer label. I love it!



We slept in bunk beds...

On Saturday, we got dirty.


And crafty.



I made this clay hedgehog. Isn't he so cute! (Lindsay...don't look at him...he might be a Christmas gift for you)


I just love this conference, it is so easy to make friends and I can just be me.



I didn't get out my new camera on this trip, it was just super heavy and I wanted something lightweight and easy to use. On a couple of the photos above, I used my iPhone. Anyway, I hope you are having a great week. I hope I get home before dark today so that I can take a few pictures of some Christmas cards I have been working on. Thanks for reading!

Project 52 Month 1 is Done

Hey!! I made a new title for my Blog title in Photoshop. I have seriously only used Photoshop like 3 times in my life so I have to sort of feel around and figure stuff out each time, but I always learn something new. I took all of the letter photos in my classroom and then cropped them to fit together!! I really like how it turned out. My next goal is to make some really crafty letters with scrapbooking supplies and photograph each letter the same way.

Anyway, I just wanted to give you an update on my Project 52 progress. I am still journaling each week. I sit down and look at my calendar at some point in the week and I jot down information about each day. Everything from funny quotes and happenings to what I ate that day might make it into the journal. I like this page style because I can go back later and add small photos and snipits from scraps that match whatever is going on that week. I can leave room in the margins for additional stuff!
Then, some point that week I make something for my journal. I found a really great list of techniques I want to try throughout the year on top of the things I have already done so far.

This month, I have been used a lot of inspiring products and they have found their way into my journal. Here is a little heart made out of hearts on craft paper. These are little stickers from K&Co.


I also made a weaving with left over scraps (from my Christmas cards!).


I made a little painting inspired by Matisse (My students are learning about Matisse at school!). He uses lots of organic shapes and I love his work.




And I used some handmade paper to do some stamping with this awesome set of eggs, I know it isn't Easter, but the little ovals are so modern that I don't really see them as Eastery anyway.



I love this journal because it is forcing me to make something every week and combine all of the things I love: journaling, photography (I don't have a lot of pics in there yet!), crafting, and art. Enojy!!

You can check out all of the people participating in Project 52 on Flickr.